What do we miss when we don't read the whole sutta?Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Wisdom Collection

So in addition to establishing principles for determining what he did and didn’t teach, he also set up protocols for how the sangha should settle disagreements on this issue when they arose.

To ensure that the meaning of the dharma would be passed on, he established the principle that teachers should be open to questioning. He didn’t want them to engage in what he called bombast: empty words, “the work of poets, the work of outsiders, artful in sound, artful in expression.” He encouraged his students to focus on teaching the end of suffering, and to encourage their students to dissect those teachings to make their meaning clear. Understanding occurs best when there’s an opportunity for an open dialogue in good faith.

To transmit the habits of the dharma, the Buddha designed the ideal teacher-student relationship on the model of an apprenticeship. You live with the teacher for a minimum of five years, attending to the teacher’s needs, as a way of observing— and being observed by—the teacher in all sorts of situations.

To allow for the fact that your sense of judgment develops over time, the Buddha didn’t force you to commit to a teacher for life. You look for someone who, as far as you can see, has integrity, but if you sense with time that integrity is lacking, you’re free to look for a new teacher.

At the same time, the Buddha realized that not everyone would have the time or inclination to undergo this apprenticeship, so he arranged a division of labor. The monks and nuns who had passed through apprenticeship were to live not in cloisters, but in places where laypeople would be free to come and learn from the fruits of their training.

So it’s obvious that the Buddha didn’t have a casual or cavalier attitude toward the preservation of his words and habits. Knowing the difficulties he’d encountered in discovering the dharma, he didn’t trust us—with our greed, aversion, and delusion— to discover it on our own. He knew we’d need help. Although he foresaw that his teachings would someday disappear, he didn’t simply resign himself to change or trust that it would always work out for the best. He established a wide range of safeguards to ensure that reliable words and models of behavior would survive as long as possible.

But in the cut-and-paste Buddhism developing around us in the West, many of these safeguards have been dropped. In particular, the idea of apprenticeship—so central in mastering the habits of the dharma as a skill—is almost totally lacking. Dharma principles are reduced to vague generalities, and the techniques for testing them are stripped to a bare, assembly-line minimum.

We reassure ourselves that the changes we’ve made in Buddhism are all for the best—that Buddhism has always adapted itself to every culture it enters, and we can trust it to adapt wisely to the West. But this treats Buddhism as if it were a conscious agent—a wise amoebic force that knows how to adapt to its environment in order to survive. Actually, Buddhism isn’t an agent, and it doesn’t adapt. It gets adapted—sometimes by people who know what they’re doing, sometimes by people who don’t. Just because a particular adaptation survives and prevails doesn’t mean that it’s genuine dharma. It may simply appeal to the desires and fears of its target audience.

Certainly we in the West are easy targets for the idea that the Buddha wants us to cut and paste his dharma as we like. Many of us have been burned by religious authorities, and we don’t want to risk getting burned again. There’s also our cultural pride: We like to think that we can see more clearly than Asian Buddhists what’s of genuine value in their traditions and what’s simply cultural baggage—as if we didn’t have cultural baggage of our own. And how do we know what’s “just baggage”? A beat-up old suitcase might contain your jewelry and keys.

So is a designer dharma what we really want? As the Buddha noted, one of the natural reactions to suffering is to search for someone who can give good advice on how to put an end to it. When offered the choice, wouldn’t you prefer reliable guidance on how to end your suffering rather than a do-it-yourself kit with vague instructions and no guarantees?

Or are there those who would benefit if you bought the kit? People sometimes argue that in our diverse, postmodern world we need a postmodern Buddhism in which no one’s interpretation can be criticized as wrong. But that’s trading the possibility of total freedom from suffering for something much less: freedom from criticism. And it ignores the other side of the postmodernist equation: that our perceived wants can be overwhelmingly shaped by the interests of institutions who want something out of us. One of the common ruses of privatization is to offer us less, dress it up as more, so that we’ll pay more for it. Is that what’s happening here?

The Buddha wasn’t so naive as to think that we can always know what’s in our own best interest. He saw long before the postmoderns that there’s plenty to mistrust both in old texts and in our own preconceptions about what seems reasonable. Yet he did the postmoderns one better by offering a solution to this dilemma. It would be a shame if, sold on the idea of designing our own dharma, we let his solution die.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu is abbot of Metta Forest Monastery, outside of San Diego. His latest book is Skill in Questions: How the Buddha Taught, available for free at www.dhammatalks.org.

The words of the original Buddha, if he did exist are lost in the fog of a pre-literate culture.
When people attempt to convince others that their Buddha stated this or that, basically what they`re hearing is the sound of their own voice.

Preliterate simply means cultures which did not use written language. Any positive or negative connotations you bring to it are your own.
My point was the difficulty in ascertaining with any degree of accuracy who Buddha was and what he said.
No judgement was made or intended regarding the superiority or inferiority of preliterate societies

OTOH, in passing on wisdom to future generations, these preliterate teachers were extremely rigorous in omitting any beliefs or practices resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown or trust in magic or chance.
As for the clever students entrusted with passing on this wisdom, it is enough to say they had memories like elephants (in fact elephants often consulted them).
The palest ink is superior to the best memory. (Chinese proverb).

Speaking of "lost in quotation.." The gods, claim the hymns of the Rg Veda, create the universe from chaos, they hold (dhar-) the earth and sun and stars apart, they support (dhar-) the sky away and distinct from earth, and they stabilize (dhar-) the quaking mountains and plains. The gods, mainly Indra, then deliver and hold order from disorder, harmony from chaos, stability from instability - actions recited in the Veda with the root of word dharma. In hymns composed after the mythological verses, the word dharma takes expanded meaning as a cosmic principle and appears in verses independent of gods. It evolves into a concept that has a dynamic functional sense in Atharvaveda for example, where it becomes the cosmic law that links cause and effect through a subject. Dharma, in these ancient texts, also takes a ritual meaning. The ritual is connected to the cosmic, and ‘‘dharmani’’ is equated to ceremonial devotion to the principles that gods used to create order from disorder, the world from chaos. Past the ritual and cosmic sense of dharma that link the current world to mythical universe, the concept extends to ethical-social sense that links human beings to each other and to other life forms. It is here that dharma as a concept of law emerges in Hinduism.

What I find amusing is that all these conflicting comments actually prove the validity of the article. Some comments argue that the original Dharma is pure gold and should be cherished as such. Others seem to think it's a remnant of the iron age and has outlived it's usefulness. I read the article as saying that the original Dharma IS gold, but it can be very slightly alloyed to make it stronger and better suited to modern times.
The other amusing thing is seeing these "Buddhists" arguing how their way is the only way and everyone else is full of shit. Sounds like the Dharma of Rush Limbaugh. Your opinion is very important, but insulting others makes you look small-minded. "Just because he is not on the same path as you doesn't mean he is lost."

For a great many westerners we can only read the Dharma and the Sangha is online or in books. Don't put ones beliefs on a pedestal and deride others' beliefs. Lately I feel like I am seeing people claim that they understand the Dharma better than others and this really comes off as condescending.

The problem is with those who think they understand the Dharma "more then others".

To say that westerners 'should adapt' to Buddhism - this perspective ignores the fact that Shakyamuni himself adopted Hindu gods and ideas into his teachings - not the opposite.
The Dharma is not a fixed set of rules, it is behaviour in dailylife: compassion, wisdom and courage (to take action). In that many western activists are "Buddhist" although not following any particular school of Theravada or Mahayana.

Martin Luther King Jr and Mandela displayed wisdom, compassion and courage, and the essence of their actions where in accordance with treasuring Humanity, (acknowledging the Buddhanature in all people), this is in accorrdance with the Dharma.

Exclusiveness of some Buddhist teachers and putting their rigid views as standard "Dharma" is basically non-Buddhist in essence.

The Dharma has a set of rules: the precepts. And being a Buddhist is more than being compassionate, courageous, wise, etc. It is to thrive to liberate ourselves from suffering according to the Dharma taught by Buddha. If you don't do so, you're not a Buddhist.

One more thing. MLK Jr could not have been in accordance with Buddhism for the simple reason that he was Christian. He believed in a god. That's OK. Live and let live. But that does not mean we should associate him with Buddhism. To believe in the Dharma means you can't believe in Christ and God.

And I know, I know. We all wish we could be all right. But the sad truth is somebody's religion is wrong. We believe Buddhism is the answer. Christians believe they are right. But still, somebody is wrong. Let's not sugar-coat reality.

"We all wish we could be all right. But the sad truth is somebody's religion is wrong. We believe Buddhism is the answer. Christians believe they are right. But still, somebody is wrong. Let's not sugar-coat reality."

"To believe in the Dharma means you can't believe in Christ and God."
Where did the Buddha state that? I believe that God and Ground of Emptiness (or Boundlessness) point to the same. And I suspect that the Kingdom of God is a Buddha's Pureland. In that case, Jesus is a Buddha. And if you have to determine who is wrong, then let's play it safe and declare that everyone is wrong. Otherwise, entertain that everyone is partially right, it is just that each one uses different vocabulary and definitions of words may differ slightly from person to person.

We may be using words in different meanings. Dharma is understood to be the Truth or the Teachings of Buddhism. Dharma conveys the Law of Impermanence, Interconnectedness, Sunyatta-Void, nonSelf, Middle Way and the Law of Cause and Effect. The Precepts are means for cultivating the mind of enlightenment, (not a goal by themselves).

Liberation from sufferings cannot be achieved without the mind of wisdom to know the cause of sufferings, the compassion to help others avoid sufferings and courage to act - as the Buddha did.

All human beings have the Buddha within. NonBuddhists have the Buddhanature within their life, but they are not aware of that.
The "Buddha" manifests in all actions to eradicate sufferings of humanity, and those who act with compassion and courage against injustice and arrogance - simply manifest their Buddhanature, even if they are not aware of it.

Exclusiveness and dividing humanity are nonBuddhist in nature. Of course there are many wrong religions, but the Buddhist approach is not accusation and criticism, it is compassionate view on how to see the positive points and start a dialogue to end sufferings. This was what Shakyamuni struggled for.

I agree with you. Your definition of the Dharma is succinct. Now imagine a teacher who understands none of this or, teaches the opposite (to get back to the initial issue), wouldn't this teacher be not good compared to others? So rationally, some teachers would be better than others. If this is the truth, wouldn't it be OK for those teachers to think they are better than others and act accordingly?

Anyway, I think ultimately we both agree on the same things. We are both Buddhists whether or not our views on teachers differ.

The writer gives a thoughtful interpretation of a sutta from the Pali Canon.
What we have to keep in mind is that this is one person's perspective on a passage from a text that was written in a language Buddha didn't speak. Also the Canon was composed 500 years after his death.
The composers of the Pali Canon were monastics who probably had several agendas in writing down the words of Gautama and veracity was only one of them. The main task of any religious follower would be to preserve the teachings and to propagate them.
In other words, it's probably best, to read the writer's words carefully and take them with the proverbial grain of salt.

Monks, these two slander the Tathagata. Which two? One who explains what was not said or spoken by the Tathagata as said or spoken by the Tathagata. And one who explains what was said or spoken by the Tathagata as not said or spoken by the Tathagata. These are the two who slander the Tathagata.
—AN 2.23

Don't know what all the fuss and anger is about (this place is as contentious as the political blogs). If we accept this quotation as authentic, does our practice reflect it? If we don't accept it, on what basis do we judge the authenticity and relevance of anything that he is reported to have said?

The quotation limits itself only to what the Tathagata did or did not say. It certainly doesn't restrict the Dharma to ONLY his words.

Take 5, Boys: “My skill has become unbelievable,” boasts Kwai Chang Caine. With a flick of his wrist a fly drops dead in front of him.
"Excellent, Grasshopper," remarks Master Po. "Please observe."
Master Po clutches at another fly, which continues to fly around the room.
"I observe that honorable fly is still alive," comments Kwai Chang.
“Yes,” replies Master Po, “but honorable fly will never be a father again."

This is exactly the kind of nonsense one of those bad teachers would offer. Only value what is difficult, and only believe what is hard to understand--a bunch of fortune-cookie slogans cribbed from Master Po.

Then they tell you that anything that requires thought or hard work isn't "real" Buddhism, "real" Buddhism is sitting and doing nothing, and never, never thinking. Of course, this is a "paradox" that is "hard to understand." Nonsense. It's "bombast" and smoke-and-mirrors. Perhaps there are so few good teachers because of the popularity of this kind of claptrap?

It isn't difficult to tell if a teacher is bad--they ask for blind devotion and spout meaningless platitudes and always tell you not to think or ask hard questions. And if the ones who think they're good are trying to prove it by playing hide-and-seek, well, they aren't good either.

Great essay. Probably the most important thing I've ever read in Tricycle.

Just one question: does anybody have suggestions for how to find teachers in the U.S. who are "open to questions," who avoid "bombast," and who don't offer the cut-and-paste Buddhism that tells students whatever they want to (or will pay to) hear? The idea of apprenticeship is really important, but most Buddhist "teachers" seem to want disciples, not apprentices, they need praise and worship, and can't be bothered with instruction and difficult questions.

I can't help thinking there must be some teachers that do what Thanissaro Bhikkhu suggests, but they don't seem to be easy to find.

I've been on retreats or studied with many teachers who are open to questions and offer traditional teachings, including Thanisarro Bhikku. He would be an excellent resource for your "apprenticeship" question. He will likely respond if you write him at Metta Forest Monastery.
From my 35+ years of experience studying/practicing Buddhism as it has come into our culture, It has been important to me to try to find teachers who were authentic in terms of who their teachers were and how well they seemed to be preserving the Buddha's teachings. There are many. Teachers I respect include Joseph Goldstein, Andy Olenski, Leigh Brasington, Rodney Smith, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Bhante Gunaratana & Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. And... Thanisarro Bhikku. There are also many "less-famous" teachers who also don't seem to be "selling" the Dharma. I hope your search is fruitful.

I was being sarcastic but per usual you took it way too seriously. You seem to do that a lot so perhaps taking the "cliche" as your personal mantra will help you lighten up a bit. And, I've never read a Dr. Strange comic in my life nor do I know who Master Po is. What I see via your defensive commentary is an angry person who likes being right and therefore is not open to a teacher as he seems to think he knows everything already.

Oh, I thought you were making a joke--you know, responding to my complaint about Buddhists talking in tired old platitudes by offering the worst one of all. I didn't realize you were trying to insult me, sorry.

Why would you think what I said was "angry"? Because I pointed out that empty cliches aren't really wisdom? Perhaps having that pointed out makes you angry, and you're projecting? I was just joking.

Are you a Buddhist? You seem pretty angry, and your anger here seems rather misdirected. Of course, maybe you're trying to teach us something. But, if that's the case, you seem to be guilty of the very thing you are railing against - having your view challenged. Have a nice cup of tea and listen to a cat purr for a few minutes.

Which apparently includes you since you are constantly on these comment boards puffed up and trying to prove your "I'm the only smart guy in the room" nonsense. Ok Tom, we all get it...you think this is all a big farce and we are all fools for reading the likes of Thich Nhat Hanh, Kornfield, Korda, (insert all other Buddhist writers here), and whomever else you find to be full of malarkey. So, it begs the question: why don't you just mosey along and leave the rest of us to enjoy. Probably because you have nothing better to do as evidenced by your inane argumentation on just about every comment that is posted. Now, I'm going to go drink some tea and get my enlightenment on. :-)
"The truth is simple, and the teachings are extremely clear; but I have seen again and again, with great sadness, that as soon as they begin to touch and move us, ego tries to complicate them, because it knows it is fundamentally threatened." SR

What Dekyi said. Virtually every comment that wtompepper makes is in the form of attack or defense (he will of course respond that this statement is an attack and that everything I say is a projection). There is no point in responding to people who are not here to learn or to listen, and who have little respect for those who are. It's like walking into a hall of mirrors or arguing with an alcoholic. I do agree that the article, like everything I've read by Thanissaro Bhikku is very clearly written and insightful. Perhaps he is the teacher wtompepper seeks. Incidentally, Dr. Strange is my favorite comic.

I may be smarter than you, and I'm sorry that makes you so very angry. Perhaps you should take that as your subject for meditation, why you wish to silence anyone you perceive to know more than you do? You say I'm angry, but it really seems to me that you are terribly angry and insulting--why do you need to be sarcastic and insulting and ask others to shut up when they challenge your comfortable ignorance? You could always not bother responding to me, right? You could "mosey along" to another discussion (there are really only four or five I've commented on).

Well, at least I was funny. I was taught the fine art of Zen sarcasm by my cat. His name is Master Po.

I am not arguing with you, nor am I arguing against the need for a good teacher. Everything is subject to challenge. Nothing is sacred if it does not withstand intellectual scrutiny. Of course, There is a Buddha quote along these lines referenced above in this very article. Unfortunately, I have not read the entire Sutta, so I may not truly understand it. How appropriate.

I own season one of Kung Fu on DVD if you want to borrow it. Master Po wasn't such a bad guy.

I didn't think you were arguing with me, I thought you were kidding. I guess I'm just dense today. You gave all the stock "cut-and-paste Buddhist's" responses: You aren't a real Buddhist; you're angry, so you're a bad Buddhist (and "angry" means, of course, you had a thought); you're attached to views; and, of course, real Buddhism is drinking tea and petting your cat/looking at flowers/being content. I seriously did assume you were making a joke, parodying the stock answers that serious thought usually gets on Tricycle. Sorry to be so dense.

I saw all the old Kung-Fu episodes when it was on tv--I can't believe anybody would want DVDs of that show!

No problem. I do love parody, and you understood my intentions. The DVD set was a gift, but I did watch the entire season. As simplistic as the insights may often be, I do enjoy when popular culture contains Buddhist references. Of course, you could probably tell that already from my screen name. And I do like a nice cup of tea, and I do like to listen to my cats purr. But, none of that can substitute for sitting on my Zafu and staring at a patch of empty wall space. None of it can substitute for trying to fathom the depths of the Genjo Koan.

I live in a mid-sized city (Tallahassee, FL). We have a Shambala group and a more traditional Tibetan group and a Korean Zen group and a Chinese Zen group, and I have sat with all of them, on occasion. But I grew up in northern California and initially sat with a Soto Zen group, and we don't have one here. So, I truly do understand your comments about the need for a good teacher. Mostly, I sit alone. My sangha these days consists of my yoga class, my cats and these discussion threads.